Should parties to a Deed of Saleappear before the same Notary Public ?

Notarization of sale or lease or other documents can at times present some problems in our practice.

One must remember that in having the documents of your transaction notarized, the parties must appear before the notary public for acknowledgment.This is also easily seen in the acknowledgment page where it states that,

“Before me, a Notary Public for and in the jurisdiction of ____________, personally appeared the following: “

Under the 2004 Rules on Notarial Practice, acknowledgment has been defined as follows,

“ SECTION 1. Acknowledgment. – “Acknowledgment refers to an act in which an individual on a single occasion:

(a)appears in person before the notary public and presents an integrally complete instrument or document;

(b)is attested to be personally known to the notary public or identified by the notary public through competent evidence of identity as defined by these Rules; and

(c)represents to the notary public that the signature on the instrument or document was voluntarily affixed by him for the purposes stated in the instrument or document, declares that he has executed the instrument or document as his free and voluntary act and deed, and, if he acts in a particular representative capacity, that he has the authority to sign in that capacity.”

It is of course the best that the parties both go together or appear in front of the notary public in acknowledging the document.

But what if the parties cannot go together and appear before the same notary public?Can they appear before different notaries public and acknowledge the document separately?

This can happen for a number of reasons, such as, the parties are located in different places or don’t have time to go together to a notary public or, even have their own private lawyer or company lawyer who notarizes documents for the party concerned.

In this case, one can actually have the parties appear in front of different notaries public.

What should one do in case both parties cannot appear before the same notary public or one party just simply would want to have their side notarized by their own lawyer or company lawyer ?

To do this, one would only have to make a provision for two acknowledgment pages or provision for acknowledgment, one for each party.In a case like this, only one party will appear in one acknowledgment page and the other party in the other acknowledgment page.

You can place the acknowledgment provisions in the same page if the acknowledgment provision can be placed or can be accommodated in one page.Otherwise, all you have to do is to have two acknowledgment pages, one for each party to the transaction who will appear before the said notary public.

The notary public will then only notarize for the party concerned in the acknowledgment portion. So, you will actually end up with two acknowledgments by two different notaries public.

In this case, you will still be able to have your document duly notarized even if both parties cannot appear before the same notary public or they prefer to appear before their own notary public.